Edison Nation Medical will work with Covidien, a leading global health care products company, to assess ideas submitted through the program, and Edison Nation Medical will share royalties with inventors of any technologies that are successfully commercialized.

“This initiative supports Covidien’s commitment to raising the standard of care and addressing challenges faced by health care providers and their patients,” said Randel Frazier, chief technology officer, Medical Devices and Emerging Markets, Covidien. “Partnering with Edison Nation Medical will allow us to harness the collective imagination of potentially thousands of health care workers and inventors around the world to find more effective ways to track patient progress post-discharge.”

Post-discharge (PD) surgical complications continue to be one of the most challenging problems in modern healthcare. According to a 2012 study in Archives of Surgery1, more than 40 percent of patients experiencing surgical complications encounter them at home, with half of those occurring within the first nine days following surgery.

The study also found that patients with PD complications have significantly higher rates of reoperation and mortality than those without PD complications2. A key focus of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is to reduce the avoidable re-hospitalization and associated costs often brought on by PD surgical complications3. Helping physicians better monitor patients remotely, post-discharge, is widely seen as a way to lower such risks.

Covidien and Edison Nation Medical are seeking solutions that will help monitor the root causes of PD complications. Some of the most common post-surgical complications include surgical site infections, respiratory ailments, wound necrosis, bleeding, thromboembolic (blood clot) events including deep-vein thrombosis, urinary tract infections and cardiac events.

Eligible submissions may include any combination of mechanical, electro-mechanical or software (mobile device or PC-based) technologies. Ideas may be submitted via a confidential portal at www.EdisonNationMedical.com/Covidien through September 1, 2014. Edison Nation Medical and Covidien will review each submission and then work to commercialize the best ideas. Individuals pay a $25 submission fee for each idea.

“Covidien has a long history of transforming health care through the introduction of clinically relevant and cost-effective solutions,” said Robert Grajewski, president of Edison Nation Medical. “We’re excited to partner with such a respected company to encourage innovative solutions to this critical health care problem.”

1Kazaure et.al., Association of Postdischarge Complications With Reoperation and Mortality in General Surgery. Archives of Surgery. 2012:147[11]:1000-1007.

Edison Nation Medical is a medical device incubator and health care innovation portal with deep product development and medical expertise. A collaboration between Carolinas HealthCare System, one of the nation’s leading health care systems, and Edison Nation, prolific product developer and online social community for inventors, Edison Nation Medical’s mission is to create more effective, efficient and safer health care through innovation by breaking down traditional barriers and providing an easy way for new medical product inventions to come to life.